Main Menu

Hearts of Iron IV

Started by Ian C, May 13, 2016, 01:07:15 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

Grim.Reaper

Quote from: WargamerJoe on May 20, 2020, 03:50:04 AM
Personally, I don't quite understand the desire to play out WW2 as it happened beyond single engagements, maybe some theatre stuff like the GG monsters. That entire period played out the way it did due to a series of fairly unique (and hard to recreate) decisions. Like Hitler essentially bluffed his way across Europe to start with right? Because everyone wanted to keep him happy? The Czechs could have perhaps resisted annexation if someone had backed them up etc.,

They'd be no point in creating a strategic/grand strategy experience where all these highly complex decision points are pre-determined. Even looking at something like the Eastern Front, monster games that try to cover the whole thing from start to finish are probably doing a slight disservice to all of the complex happenings that took place across different sections of the front-line. (Not that there's anything wrong with broad strokes though.)

Not sure there is much that requires understanding, it's just a person's personal desire in what they want in a game they play.  Everybody is entitled to that regardless who agrees with their approach.  With that said, my personal taste is just to play games that are in the realm of being reasonably realistic for the times of the game without having too many restrictions that force a player to a certain outcome.  I want to have enough control where I have a chance to change the outcome if my actions deserve it.

But to each their own.....

Ian C

#1426
1,093 hours played. HOI 4 is not by any means realistic, but it has realism in it and if you manage to learn it, it's great fun. I've played historically and it's fun. The best challenges in the game come from playing an ahistorical game, where your strategies are new and untested in history. When you don't know how history will unfold, you are playing by the seat of your pants and thinking as a supreme commander would. I set the AI nations' focuses to 'random' and dive in. Sure, a fascist USA and Germany in a civil war is fantastical but then it gives you a clean slate to act and plan in way that's unique.

The closest I've come to realism is War in the West, and although it's complex and realistic, it's a huge game to learn and doesn't cover all of Europe.
Warplan is currently my go-to WW2 in Europe strategy game. In my opinion, it's the closest thing to simulating classic tabletop WW2 strategy games. I think it also plays out realistically, with historical results and has the most realistic unit building, logistics and supply system in any game.


bobarossa

Quote from: WargamerJoe on May 20, 2020, 03:50:04 AM
Personally, I don't quite understand the desire to play out WW2 as it happened beyond single engagements, maybe some theatre stuff like the GG monsters. That entire period played out the way it did due to a series of fairly unique (and hard to recreate) decisions. Like Hitler essentially bluffed his way across Europe to start with right? Because everyone wanted to keep him happy? The Czechs could have perhaps resisted annexation if someone had backed them up etc.,

They'd be no point in creating a strategic/grand strategy experience where all these highly complex decision points are pre-determined. Even looking at something like the Eastern Front, monster games that try to cover the whole thing from start to finish are probably doing a slight disservice to all of the complex happenings that took place across different sections of the front-line. (Not that there's anything wrong with broad strokes though.)
Many of your complaints about strategy games are valid for individual battles too.  Officers and men frequently don't follow orders, either willfully or by mistake.  Commanders ignore reports from field and do something ill-advised.  Sometimes actions of individual soldiers could have a huge impact on the battle.  My brother likes to mention a Japanese scout plane at Midway who's radio failed and couldn't report the location of American carriers until it got back.  Few wargames model the realism of war.  I believe it was Forge of Freedom that did model the lack of control by having units that were out of command range frequently move to hexes other than the one commanded. 

sandman2575

Quote from: bobarossa on May 20, 2020, 09:46:02 AM
Few wargames model the realism of war.  I believe it was Forge of Freedom that did model the lack of control by having units that were out of command range frequently move to hexes other than the one commanded.

Hear, hear!  I totally agree with this.

I know 'realism' is a slippery concept... but if there's one place games like HOI -- and most other -- strategy titles could do A LOT better, it's modeling fog of war, the importance of intelligence gathering and signals discipline / code-protecting and code-breaking, and the many, many difficulties of maintaining CnC when many different forces and many different commanders are involved.

In HOI, and really in so many games, you almost always know pretty much exactly the composition of enemy forces. I would LOVE to see much, much more uncertainty and misinformation baked into the system. I guess the fear of devs is that this would turn off too many casual players -- maybe that's right. And if all your generals don't act as robots obeying your every command, again, that would discourage players. Personally, I'd love to see more of that. It's one of things I liked about the AGEOD games, where commanders could fail to activate or receive orders.

I haven't played it, but this seems like one of the things Radio General is doing well -- injecting a lot of uncertainty into your picture of the battlefield. Would love to see this applied in more games!

The side-benefit of this is, from a single-player standpoint, it makes for a better challenge against the AI. Frankly, bad luck, dumb decisions, misinformation should be the rule, not the exception. Since the AI routinely makes dumb decisions, it's almost acting as though these features are already in place, while the human player gets near perfect information. Level the playing field! Yes, it would lead to frustrating, but that would be way more interesting than just running roughshod over the AI, as is the case in so many games, HOI included.

Ian C

Patch released & Future DLC Teaser:


1.9.3 Patch

For this patch we wanted to focus on naval issues and improvements as we didn't touch that very much for La RĂ©sistance. To summarize the most important changes:

Naval tech rebalance
It's best to check the changelog for details here, but our goal has been to make tech investments into more efficient submarines more expensive and sub countering and investments into capital ships cheaper.

Convoys and stun-locking

A very annoying strategy in multiple and sometimes in SP has been being able to essentially stun lock an enemies transports of troops in place at sea by lots of small naval engagements with submarines. Even if well screened they still need to wait to retreat and then would get caught again and again, sometimes taking months to get across the atlantic. To deal with this we have increased the retreat speed bonuses from being well screened and also implemented a cooldown system. This system will give transports a cooldown after being caught where they can not be re-spotted again. The length of it depends on the length of their path as well as how well screened they are. For an unscreened vessel they will be caught pretty quickly in more interceptions while a properly screened one can continue on until the invasion beach if its not too far.

Carriers and other naval changes

Carriers in the pacific really struggle with the large air zones and the weather penalties. It didn't make sense to us to apply the area size penalties to a mobile base with so few planes, so now any mission targeting a specific location (port strike, CAS etc) for planes stationed on a carrier will not have this penalty.

On top of this it didn't make sense to have carriers planes suffer a 100% penalty from bad weather when land based ones had a much smaller one. While I doubt any planes could take off during a really bad storm, it makes little sense when we only really have one level of weather here to make it so brutal, so this penalty has been reduced to 80%. We also felt that if the weather is truly this bad guns really should be struggling more than they do as well as doubled that penalty to 20% to close the gap.

Carriers now also help the fleet overall. The side with the carrier plane advantage in the battle will penalize positioning of the other side, similar a bit in spirit to the effects of air superiority on land. We also made light guns a bit worse and buffed targeting and power of bigger guns to try and strengthen mixed fleets. We have also increased the base detection abilities of carriers a bit to better model how important they were for spotting enemies at sea.

Another thing of note is that we have fixed an annoying interaction between air superiority and naval spotting. Because air superiority applies on average on the zones a task force was operating you could shield them with planes in a zone they were not even in, which might be somewhere your enemy couldn't even reach and contest. Now it will be looking at the specific area they are in instead.

Out Of Syncs
Telemetry was telling us that the vast majority of out of syncs were happening in the first half of 1936, and for weeks we simply could not reproduce this inhouse, but recently we had a breakthrough. We found some data related to technologies that was not properly reset when entering a new game and this is hopefully the core reason for this. We will be looking at telemetry data to hopefully see the OOS frequency take a nose dive, because this stuff is truly hard for us to test fully ourselves, but we are optimistic!

So what are we up to now?
We have been wanting to shorten the time between content update for a while and are going to take a serious stab at it now. That means that we are currently working on two things at once in parallel actually. In the pipe we have 1.10 'Collie' as well as 1.11 'Barbarossa'. That's about as much information as I can give you right now. We are not yet ready to start dev diaries on 'Collie' but look forward to it some time after summer vacation. We have some massively awesome stuff planned and I think you are all gonna like it (if people wanna see the roadmap, it was last updated in this dev diary https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/hoi4-dev-diary-1-9-1-patch-roadmap-update.1370573/ ).


################################################################
######## Hotfix 1.9.3 "Husky" ########
################################################################

##################################
# Balance
##################################
- decreased suppression value of SP-Art battalions
- decreased suppression value of SP-AA battalions
- decreased suppression value of SP-AT battalions
- decreased research cost on destroyer hulls
- decreased research cost on depth charge technologies
- increased research cost on 1940 and 1944 submarine hulls
- increased research cost on torpedo module upgrades
- decreased research cost of naval munitions upgrades for light and heavy guns
- decreased research cost of armor schemes
- increased the cost of initial radar tech, lowered cost on all other radar techs
- decreased IC cost of all ship heavy batteries
- increased damage of all heavy ship batteries
- increased piercing of all medium ship batteries
- increased damage of all medium ship batteries
- Carrier planes no longer take area coverage penalties on their targeted/ground missions
- Increased carrier hull surface detection base from 20 to 26
- Added a cooldown timer after naval transfers are engaged at sea and escape to avoid stun-locking issues with many small fleets. The cooldown depends on the screening efficiency of the defenders so a defended convoy will have a longer cooldown the better defended it is
- Added an extra speed boost to convoys retreat speed when screened
- Effective carrier plane advantage in naval combat now gives penalties to positioning for the other side
- Increased air-to-air damage factor in carrier battles from 5 to 6
- increase air attack targeting scoring for carriers to make them more likely targets for other carriers
- increased naval hit penalty from 10% to 20% in heavy rain
- reduced carrier traffic penalty from 100% to 80% in heavy rain
- Reduce heavy gun target signature from 90 to 80 and increased light gun target signature from 40 to 45 to make heavy guns a bit more versatile and light guns a bit slower at picking off screens
- Patrol convoy raiding and convoy escort missions now rely on local navy position for air superiority rather than average of air zones to stop high air superiority in a zone from saving the ships from spotting in another.


##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################
- Fixed OOS related to asking an operative to resume their mission after the operation they are assigned to completes
- Fixed OOS linked to technologies not being properly reset between games
- Fixed OOS triggered by a country asking for manpower after a civil war
- Prevented crash when trying to respond to faction invite from a faction that no longer exists
- fixed a ctd that happens when a non-existing capitulated country checks for uncapitulation


##################################
# Modding
##################################
- Added play_song and scoped_play_song effects
- added on_war_relation_added on action (scope is attacker, from is defender)
- Made targeting weights for air-to-ship in naval combat moddable. See NAVAL_COMBAT_AIR_*_TARGET_SCORE defines.


##################################
# Bugfix
##################################
- Updated the forum link in main menu to match the new forum
- Bulgaria will no longer start with Flexible Navy focus completed in 1939

Destraex

Quote from: sandman2575 on May 20, 2020, 10:59:35 AM
Quote from: bobarossa on May 20, 2020, 09:46:02 AM
Few wargames model the realism of war.  I believe it was Forge of Freedom that did model the lack of control by having units that were out of command range frequently move to hexes other than the one commanded.

Hear, hear!  I totally agree with this.

I know 'realism' is a slippery concept... but if there's one place games like HOI -- and most other -- strategy titles could do A LOT better, it's modeling fog of war, the importance of intelligence gathering and signals discipline / code-protecting and code-breaking, and the many, many difficulties of maintaining CnC when many different forces and many different commanders are involved.

In HOI, and really in so many games, you almost always know pretty much exactly the composition of enemy forces. I would LOVE to see much, much more uncertainty and misinformation baked into the system. I guess the fear of devs is that this would turn off too many casual players -- maybe that's right. And if all your generals don't act as robots obeying your every command, again, that would discourage players. Personally, I'd love to see more of that. It's one of things I liked about the AGEOD games, where commanders could fail to activate or receive orders.

I haven't played it, but this seems like one of the things Radio General is doing well -- injecting a lot of uncertainty into your picture of the battlefield. Would love to see this applied in more games!

The side-benefit of this is, from a single-player standpoint, it makes for a better challenge against the AI. Frankly, bad luck, dumb decisions, misinformation should be the rule, not the exception. Since the AI routinely makes dumb decisions, it's almost acting as though these features are already in place, while the human player gets near perfect information. Level the playing field! Yes, it would lead to frustrating, but that would be way more interesting than just running roughshod over the AI, as is the case in so many games, HOI included.
I have been having a wuick look at hoiIV, the intel systems seem to me to be atrocious. My trouble is that in my first game I had no idea what the other side had. You have to techh up to have the faintest idea. Real life you would have a basic idea.
"They only asked the Light Brigade to do it once"

Ian C

It may be worth checking out some of the latest map and counter mods. Note: you may need to disable 3d units, buildings, forests and reflections in options.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2204232196

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2172315725









W8taminute

^That's an impressive mod.
"You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend."

Romulan Commander to Kirk

Rayfer

Nice looking....may have to check it out.

Rekim


FarAway Sooner

I wanted to love this game.  I've wanted to love this whole series.  But I've just not been able to get enough understanding of what's happening to get invested in it. 

Maybe that's a function of my limited free time, and my limited surplus mental energy these days after dealing with a full-time job, two young kids, and all the coronavirus craziness that is the new normal?

I think there's an extraordinary nostalgic appreciation (?) for WW II and the history that went with it.  That's especially true for certain nationalities, I think.  For some, going radically alternate history ruins that sense of nostalgia.  I enjoy gaming out certain "what if?" scenarios, but I lose my sense of patriotic nostalgia if America is invading a Fascist UK in 1943 because their alliance with Imperial Japan petered out before they could both conquer China...

However, I would love to play around with different choices on a strategic level that I just can't get at a tactical level.

What if the US hadn't focused on a strategic bombing campaign in Europe in WW II?  What if Japan had caught US carriers at Pearl Harbor and then not overreached in the first six months of their war?  What if Nazi Germany had gone all in on U-boats, rather than wasting energy on surface combatants that were never going to challenge the Royal Navy, much less a joint UK-US navy?  What if the US had focused on building more and better tanks, as opposed to more and better airplanes?  What if France had turned Fascist in the late 30s, and war had eventually broken out between a Germany/Italy/France faction and a UK/US faction?

I can explore all of those alternatives without ruining a sense of immersion, whereas having Poland conquer Russia by late 1944 kind of does ruin the immersion for me...

Ian C

#1436
Quote from: FarAway Sooner on August 28, 2020, 10:28:32 AM
I wanted to love this game.  I've wanted to love this whole series.  But I've just not been able to get enough understanding of what's happening to get invested in it. 

Maybe that's a function of my limited free time, and my limited surplus mental energy these days after dealing with a full-time job, two young kids, and all the coronavirus craziness that is the new normal?

I think there's an extraordinary nostalgic appreciation (?) for WW II and the history that went with it.  That's especially true for certain nationalities, I think.  For some, going radically alternate history ruins that sense of nostalgia.  I enjoy gaming out certain "what if?" scenarios, but I lose my sense of patriotic nostalgia if America is invading a Fascist UK in 1943 because their alliance with Imperial Japan petered out before they could both conquer China...

However, I would love to play around with different choices on a strategic level that I just can't get at a tactical level.

What if the US hadn't focused on a strategic bombing campaign in Europe in WW II?  What if Japan had caught US carriers at Pearl Harbor and then not overreached in the first six months of their war?  What if Nazi Germany had gone all in on U-boats, rather than wasting energy on surface combatants that were never going to challenge the Royal Navy, much less a joint UK-US navy?  What if the US had focused on building more and better tanks, as opposed to more and better airplanes?  What if France had turned Fascist in the late 30s, and war had eventually broken out between a Germany/Italy/France faction and a UK/US faction?

I can explore all of those alternatives without ruining a sense of immersion, whereas having Poland conquer Russia by late 1944 kind of does ruin the immersion for me...


Yes, you have to invest time, play slow, pause the game a lot and it's a time-vampire.
The game does require a lot of time to get into. In some respects I love it, in others, there are things I find frustrating. It's a game that demands all your attention and I'm not sure real-time strategy is suitable for this kind of game as it takes a lot of work and slow game speed to keep on top of everything that's happening. It's easy to get centred on one battle only to find your navy is getting killed halfway across the world and you missed it. Paradox also have an odd hang-up for using tiny scrolling lists and info boxes. There's no map feedback for many important things and you have to know where to look within the GUI to fnd them. In other respects, it's the most in-depth game of its kind. Only Warplan comes close but lacks the global scope and minute details that HOI 4 has. I guess if I were to design my perfect WW2 Grand Strategy Game, it would be HOI4 with Warplan's graphics and sensibility, a real map and the TOE and detail of War in the West.

You can follow alt-history paths with HOI4 and it is one of its strengths. Once I got past the past the need to follow history, it did open up new gameplay experiences that was challenging new ground. Using cheats in non-Ironman mode is also great fun (What if Poland had late-war vehicles, aircraft and weaponry in 1936? How about nukes too?).



Rayfer

Quote from: Ian C on August 29, 2020, 06:27:34 AM
Quote from: FarAway Sooner on August 28, 2020, 10:28:32 AM
I wanted to love this game.  I've wanted to love this whole series.  But I've just not been able to get enough understanding of what's happening to get invested in it. 

Maybe that's a function of my limited free time, and my limited surplus mental energy these days after dealing with a full-time job, two young kids, and all the coronavirus craziness that is the new normal?

I think there's an extraordinary nostalgic appreciation (?) for WW II and the history that went with it.  That's especially true for certain nationalities, I think.  For some, going radically alternate history ruins that sense of nostalgia.  I enjoy gaming out certain "what if?" scenarios, but I lose my sense of patriotic nostalgia if America is invading a Fascist UK in 1943 because their alliance with Imperial Japan petered out before they could both conquer China...

However, I would love to play around with different choices on a strategic level that I just can't get at a tactical level.

What if the US hadn't focused on a strategic bombing campaign in Europe in WW II?  What if Japan had caught US carriers at Pearl Harbor and then not overreached in the first six months of their war?  What if Nazi Germany had gone all in on U-boats, rather than wasting energy on surface combatants that were never going to challenge the Royal Navy, much less a joint UK-US navy?  What if the US had focused on building more and better tanks, as opposed to more and better airplanes?  What if France had turned Fascist in the late 30s, and war had eventually broken out between a Germany/Italy/France faction and a UK/US faction?

I can explore all of those alternatives without ruining a sense of immersion, whereas having Poland conquer Russia by late 1944 kind of does ruin the immersion for me...


Yes, you have to invest time, play slow, pause the game a lot and it's a time-vampire.
The game does require a lot of time to get into. In some respects I love it, in others, there are things I find frustrating. It's a game that demands all your attention and I'm not sure real-time strategy is suitable for this kind of game as it takes a lot of work and slow game speed to keep on top of everything that's happening. It's easy to get centred on one battle only to find your navy is getting killed halfway across the world and you missed it. Paradox also have an odd hang-up for using tiny scrolling lists and info boxes. There's no map feedback for many important things and you have to know where to look within the GUI to fnd them. In other respects, it's the most in-depth game of its kind. Only Warplan comes close but lacks the global scope and minute details that HOI 4 has. I guess if I were to design my perfect WW2 Grand Strategy Game, it would be HOI4 with Warplan's graphics and sensibility, a real map and the TOE and detail of War in the West.

You can follow alt-history paths with HOI4 and it is one of its strengths. Once I got past the past the need to follow history, it did open up new gameplay experiences that was challenging new ground. Using cheats in non-Ironman mode is also great fun (What if Poland had late-war vehicles, aircraft and weaponry in 1936? How about nukes too?).

IC....what you posted here is very much my experience with the game as well.  Very entertaining yet at times deeply frustrating.  But I keep going back.  I subscribed to the map and counter mods you posted earlier and have started yet another campaign.

RyanE

I feel the same way.  My son and I both have it and I have attempted to play it with him.  He has spent two years mastering it and I can't even come close to understanding research, diplomacy, and production.  I the crap out of CMO and just don't have the time for two life-sucking games.  Its similar to WITP.  You have to really commit to it.  There is very little casual gaming in these games.

FarAway Sooner

Yeah.  I think you guys nailed it.  For me, the interface just isn't terribly intuitive.  I'd guess that I've spent 20-30 hours playing the game and another few hours watching tutorials.  I read a bunch of stuff about the combat mechanism, but that just feels... unsatisfying to me.

You know another game that has a really rough interface, but is one of the best representations of WW II at the strategic level?  Gary Grigsby's World at War!!  The UI is just attrocious, but the underlying mechanics are amazingly subtle yet simple.  The game is a weird mash-up of Third Reich and Risk.  It also allows for subtle variations of strategic emphasis, without going all the way off the rails.